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TV Thursday: The Tick Season 1 (2017)

I really loved the first Tick live action series, it was a great show with what I consider to be the perfect actor in the role, Patrick Warburton. Of course, the animated series from the 90s was fantastic, so when I heard that Amazon Prime was going to reboot the series, I was certainly interested, albeit cautious. After all, I couldn’t imagine anyone else in the role but Warburton and even though I knew he was involved, he also wasn’t playing the titular character.

Even after seeing a “leaked” first episode just over a year ago, while I really liked it, I knew it had a lot of work to do to get past that hump. Well, yesterday, at least as I write this, Amazon dropped half of the 12-episode season and I had to watch it right away. But since I have no idea when the rest of the season is coming, I figured I’d review what I have so far. Was it worth the wait? Let’s find out.

The Tick arrives in The City, a nigh-invulnerable superhero with lots of muscle and not a lot of brains. He meets up with Arthur, a neurotic man whose father was killed by the evil Terror in his youth. Can The Tick and Arthur combat evil, or will Arthur’s overprotective sister Dot ruin everything?

To be honest, as good as Peter Serafinowicz was, he’s just not Patrick Warburton. He doesn’t have the look. The voice was close, I will admit that, and Warburton even threw in his own voice on a couple of intros, but the second I heard that, that’s who I wanted in the costume. So it just had that working against it the whole way through.

My other problem, and I know this is an introductory story so it’s completely understandable, but I wanted a larger cast of characters like Batmanuel and Captain Liberty. It was more focused on Arthur’s family life and coming to grips with being a sidekick than it was with actual heroic adventures. But to be honest, I want to see a show focused on The Tick, not on Arthur. I mean he’s great as an audience focus character but he’s not the actual focus of the show.

They also, at least at this point, haven’t developed the world very much. Granted, 6 half-hour episodes isn’t really enough to do a lot with, but we know something about how the world works, we know about the Terror, we know about superheroes and how they’re regarded, but I just wanted more. Again though, I think my perception is colored by the original live action series and I really wanted things to pick up there instead of starting over. It’s an unrealistic expectation to be sure, but damn it, that’s what I wanted!

That said though, I’m happy with what we’re getting and I have no idea when we’re getting more. It’s supposed to be 12 episodes but I haven’t seen a release date for the back half of the season. It could resolve all of my concerns and I hope it does, but I can only go with what we’ve actually seen, not what I hope we see in the future. So as far as the first half of season one is concerned, I give The Tick: